James Cavaziel is a “Person of Interest” with Violent Tendencies

September 29, 2011, 9 PM (ET), CBS The second week of “Person of Interest” with James Cavaziel as a hard-boiled ex-CIA assassin, upped the body count considerably, and that’s saying something! This J.J. Abrams (“Lost”), Jonathan Nolan (“Memento”) vehicle has to be one of the most violent shows on the air.

The plot this night revolved around trying to protect a young girl who was the only member of her family not wiped out in a cold-blooded attempt to profit from their death(s). The twisted underpinnings of the plot have brother Derrick Whitaker agreeing to become the executor of the estate of his dead brother Grant, whose family is presumed dead. However, the hit man, whom Cavaziel visits in prison, tells the ex-CIA guy that he is not “in” to killing children, and that is why Derrick is not going to profit from the death of his brother and family. .Daughter Theresa is still alive. As long as Theresa is still alive, she is the legal heir to the development known as Greenpoint, not brother Derrick, who was initially presumed to be the heir when his brother died intestate.

In the attempt to find and defend Theresa, Cavaziel—who has the benefit of a machine (“an Orwellian nightmare”) created by Michael Emerson, a “Lost” alumnae, that tells which person is going to be the intended victim of a coming crime by spitting out his or her Social Security number—first kills 2 men in an elevator.

That assault—which never slows Cavaziel down by so much as a step— is quickly followed by a grim bar fight with gunfire, a shooting in a Laundromat, the slashing of Cavaziel’s hand on the street by the terrified Theresa as she flees, two-timing brother Derrick shot in the head and death by truck, with Cavaziel crashing into a car full of bad guys.

All-in-all, the violent attacks are many and varied. Cavaziel emerges from each altercation with barely a scratch. This is nowhere underscored more emphatically than when he is thrown out of the bar by bodyguards but re-enters the bar and (apparently) wreaks havoc. (We see it from the viewpoint of the driver of his car, waiting outside, who played a gangster in the defunct series “Providence.”)

I’m liking James Cavaziel, as always. And the plot involving Landahl Financial-Greenpoint Development and a thug named Calhoun is adequate, but it all seems merely to be a ruse to allow the writers to script one unremittingly violent action scene after another, in the tradition of Ludlum’s Jason Bourne (Matt Damon).

If violence is not your cup of tea, this is not the series for you. Hopefully, the violence will be justified and occasionally touch bases with reality.